1.3.9

Case Studies

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Case Studies and Life Histories

Both case studies and life histories are favoured by interpretivist researchers and tend to yield qualitative data.

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Case studies & life histories

  • A case study is an in-depth investigation of a single example.
    • For example, Willis’s study of specific counter-school sub-cultures tried to explore using interviews at schools why children from certain social backgrounds got certain types of jobs.
  • Life histories are specific kind of case study that looks at the overall life of one individual or small group, often using in-depth unstructured interviews supported by personal documents, such as diaries and letters.
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Advantages

  • They can be useful to test wider theories, such as working class boys’ attitudes towards education.
  • They can be useful for generating new hypotheses or testing in further research or as an adjunct to other types of research.
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Advantages cont.

  • They provide more valid in-depth detail and understanding from the point of view of the individual or group than can be obtained by positivist methods such as surveys and questionnaires.
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Disadvantages

  • They are not representative of the larger population, so findings cannot be generalised.
  • They may not be valid; life histories, for example, view the past from the standpoint of the present and facts might be misremembered.

Jump to other topics

1Theory & Methods

2Education with Methods in Context

3Option 1: Culture & Identity

4Option 1: Families & Households

5Option 1: Health

6Option 1: Work, Poverty & Welfare

7Option 2: Beliefs in Society

8Option 2: Global Development

9Option 2: The Media

10Crime & Deviance

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